[Vision2020] Taking charge of your own life...

[Don Kaag]

Meylinda:

Nope.  As I stated, Yvonne is a very bright, very well-educated lady.  
She knew exactly what she was saying when she said that she was opposed 
to affirmative action.

I never heard anything from her about white racists and male sexists.  
And I suspect that was because she is a lady that does not abide fools 
gladly, and she would simply walk over around or through anyone who 
exhibited those attributes, especially in the U.S. Army. The Army was 
the first segment of America to be fully integrated, and since 1947 and 
Truman's executive order making it so, has had plenty of time to put 
resources and programs in place to ensure such scum-bucket beliefs are 
controlled in uniform and on duty.

We were very good friends.  My wife and I were in the peculiar and 
broadening position of being the only white people at lots of parties 
and get-togethers with Yvonne and her BUPPIE (Black Urban 
Professionals...) friends from Seattle and Tacoma, as Ft. Lewis was 
close to home for her, and many of her classmates from UW were living 
and working in the area.  It is actually kind of cute to be referred to 
as "that nice lil' white boy" by people who use it affectionately.

I don't believe in affirmative action, either.  I believe in an even 
break.  Anyone who qualifies academically should be freely admitted to 
any school or job in the land, regardless of sex, color, religion, or 
ethnicity.  The best qualified should be accepted, and if that means 
(as it probably does...) that 3/4 of the students in California's 
university system are Asian, than so be it.  Asians are Americans, too. 
  I despise prejudice in all of its forms, but I also believe that you 
get what you work and pay for.

My family have never owned slaves or oppressed anyone.  As a matter of 
fact, my great-great grandfather, a Military Academy graduate from 
Norfolk, Virginia, was one of the few Southern officers who did not 
resign his commission and go South to fight for the Confederacy in the 
late Disagreement Between the States.  He was foresquare for abolition, 
and fought the entire war in Union blue.  History books list him as 
General George Thomas, "The Rock of Chicamaugua".

Regards,

Don Kaag


On Tuesday, February 18, 2003, at 12:52 PM, Melynda Huskey wrote:

> Don Kaag mentioned, in an earlier post, that he had a colleague who 
> hated Affirmative Action because, as a black woman, she was always 
> suspected of benefitting unfairly from it.
>
> May I suggest that what your colleague hated, Don, was white racists 
> and male sexists, not Affirmative Action?
>
> It's tempting to imagine that in this day and age, there are no 
> barriers to full equality among all people--that it's a failure of the 
> individual will, not a bias in systems, that causes inequality.  It's 
> particularly tempting for those of us who are on the top of the heap:  
> we got here 'cause we worked hard and deserve it, not because we've 
> systematically benefitted from bias, right?
>
> If you haven't seen it, Allan Johnson's *Privilege, Power, and 
> Difference* is a thoughtful, brief, and easy-to-read treatment of the 
> biases and privileges built into social life, in which we all 
> participate, whether or not we as individuals wish to or intend to.
>
> Melynda Huskey
>
> "We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with 
> outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever: this 
> is our testimony to the whole world."
> Quaker Declaration of 1660
>
>
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